PENGUINS

There was a controversy at the end of the Penguins' practice on Monday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.

The team will often divide into groups of two -- Black and Gold -- for competitive drills, with the losing team facing some sort of consequence ... usually just 10 pushups. They ran two such drills early in practice, with Black -- the group largely comprised of top-six, top-pairing players -- coming out on the losing side.

The final portion of practice was a small-area, two-on-two drill using just one zone of the ice. It came down to the final point -- Gold scored, celebrated, and made a beeline to the stretch circle for the end of practice.

The Black team, however, threw up their arms and argued that the last goal shouldn't have counted. The coaches agreed, and had them replay the final point. Black won the redo, and it was chaos -- the winning side had over-the-top celebrations, Gold was outraged.

I asked a few players after practice what happened.

"I mean, in my eyes, we scored," Gold's Ryan Graves said. "I don't know what happened. There was controversy that we stepped over the line. I don't know. We didn't even ... I guess we replayed it, but it should have been over! I don't know. I can't think of a good reason that it didn't count."

Blake Lizotte was apoplectic when Black won, breaking his stick in frustration and throwing it across the ice. He was much more measured in recapping the events afterward.

"There was a questionable call," he said. "Gold won the game. It got called back because there was a questionable penalty, if you will, and we didn't agree with the decision. There were boundaries, and apparently we were not in the correct boundary when we touched the puck. So that's the fiasco. If you ask Coach (Nick Bonino), he'd also agree with me. But at the end of the day, it's good competition and friendly fun. We had a lot of fun, but still not happy with the decision."

Now, Evgeni Malkin is always fun to watch when the pushup penalties are being fulfilled. When his team wins, he's always the first to ensure that the losers get all their pushups in. I remember a scene a couple seasons ago when Malkin's team won, Marcus Pettersson's lost, and Malkin didn't think Pettersson's pushups were good enough, so he stood behind him whacking him on the back of the legs with his stick as he yelled like a drill sergeant. 

But when Malkin's team loses ... he's probably going to cheat the pushups more than anyone. When his team lost the first two drills, I counted -- every guy I watched on Black did 10, while Malkin did five.

"We're supposed to do 10! I don't know if everyone does 10," Graves said. "Geno ain't doing 10."

Lizotte said that as the winners, they are "skating around, enforcing" that the losers do 10 pushups, and do them correctly. I ratted Malkin out as only doing five, and that wasn't news to him.

"Oh, we know," Lizotte said. "It's outrageous."

When Gold lost the replayed final point, their players did their part and did their 10 pushups. Malkin, as usual, sat in his spot in the stretch circle, yelling to ensure everyone on Gold took their punishment, and yelling across the circle at anyone on Gold who tried pleading their case on the no-goal call that would have won it all for them.

He's the best.